Figtree Police in bid to arrest Mzila

Figtree police attempted to arrest ANSA Interim Leader Moses Mzila-Ndlovu (66) on August 22, Thursday afternoon. Mzila-Ndlovu says he requested the police to come to his farm Mapungubge Farm Technologies, to clear livestock for movement out of the farm. While one officer, CST Kandawire was doing the clearance, the other officer CST Bomba said to Mzila he had been instructed by his superiors to bring Mzila to the station soon after. Mzila said he did not have fuel and asked what the 'visit' was in connection with, Bomba said a car would be provided and that the matter had  to do with the closure of a docket (lie). Pressed further to explain whether the police were now doing Public Prosecutor work he said it was the PP who had issued summons to bring Mzila to court. Mzila then realised that he was being arrested with a plan to have him in the cells until after the weekend and challenged Bomba to go ahead and arrest him but Bomba couldn't effect the arrest though he inadvertently revealed that the arrest was over Mzilas failure to appear in court on July 9, 2019. When Mzila said he, in fact, appeared in court on the said date represented by his lawyer Nqobani Sithole where the matter was removed from remand Bomba would not hear of it. At that point it became clear to Mzila that the police for reasons that can only be political were using a dead case to harass him, something they have diligently done over the years with the hope if breaking his spirit.

Mzila reminded the two officers that they were enjoying privileges previously reserved for white officers only because of his contribution in the liberation struggle with Zipra. He said it was ironical that the same beneficiaries of his sacrifices were subjecting him to continuous inhuman abuse by behaving like Zanupf agents out to settle scores for merely being told that they had committed gross human rights violations through the gukurahundi operation and had run the country down. Kandawire arrogantly accused Mzila of talking politics. Mzila asked since when has truth and politics been criminalised. She was silent.

Mzila further reminded the officers that it was strange that of all the livestock theft/snaring/slaughter cases he reported to Figtrre and Donnington Police Stations since 2007 amounting to 26 head of cattle and 20 goats, non of the cases have been taken to court even in instances where he himself apprehended the accused and handed them over to the police. He also reminded them that in many instances where an accused was handed over and he provided transport for the police details and the accused to the station the police would nevertheless come back to arrest him the next day or two for one reason or another. Ridiculous police trumped up charges on Mzila since 2001 include armed robbery of thieves attempting to steal his livestock, stealing a cellphone from a wood poacher, murder of ghost victims.

Mzila-Ndlovu is not knew to trumped up charges by the Zanupf government. He says soon he re-entered politics in 2000 the ZRP has laid numerous obscenely frivolous charges that initially induced a sense of shock in him. His explanation for Thursday's police behaviour is that the Zanupf government is desperate to silence him but says over his dead body and his goal is to see all those who carried out the massacre of innocent and unarmed civilians in Matebeleland and the Midlands in a gut wrenching ethnic hatred genocide the so called first world and its esteemed international bodies prefer to forget, brought before the International Criminal Court to answer to charges of humanslaughter in accordance with International Law. Those who committed similar crimes in Rwanda, Cambodia, Serbia, Germany etc have been dragged to the Hague or ICC courts set up elsewhere.

Mzila maintains that it is criminal of police to do  Zanupf dirty jobs of rights abuses on political opponents in order to cow them as one day they will be required to account for their partisan law enforcement and further says the current culture of impunity they enjoy now will not be sufficient insulation against prosecution in the future. Mzila is confident that Zanupf will fall one day of course not because of the MDC. He however is quick to add that of the many people who have directly abused him in his political career, very few still live today.

He says he was arrested in 2001 by Sauerstown Police at night, accused of murder, later transferred to Queenspark Police Station. He was then subjected to torture by nine CIO operatives in a cell he was being held alone. They stripped him naked, handcuffed and leg ironed while he lay on a cold floor with cold water poured on him during the  interrogations. When he was asked why he did not go to Zanuof in 1987, he replied that he felt Zanupf was a tribal party one of the officers bashed him with a wooden chair until it broke to pieces. To this day his physical health has never been good.

Delinfa Hlabalingene